Word: parrish
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...years ago had an attribute not shared by the pop art of today: it was popular. The most popular of the artists of that time, Maxfield Parrish, now 93, painted book illustrations and calendars that were reproduced by the millions. College boys hung his works in their rooms amidst a clutter of crew oars, fencing foils and mooseheads. From a first cover for Harper's Weekly in 1895, he painted on to become the country's best-paid artist...
...Parrish's gnomes and damsels, straight out of King Arthur and tempered by romantic Pre-Raphaelite gentility, adorned the covers of Collier's, Century and Scribner's. His best-known commission (around $50,000) was a 28-ft.-long mural of Old King Cole for the merry old souls in the bar of John Jacob Astor's Hotel Knickerbocker, which can still be seen in Manhattan's Hotel St. Regis. Medieval nobility was a deathless theme for Parrish; even the caption for his 1921 Jell-O ad ran: "The King and Queen might eat hereof...
What ever could bring Parrish back? None other than the pop promoter of this era: Lawrence Alloway, nimble curator of Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum. Alloway has escorted a show of Parrish's work from far-out Bennington College to Manhattan's conservative Gallery of Modern Art, where last week 52 Parrish.es went on view...
Alloway gave his highest praise to Parrish: "Behind a screen of high technique, Parrish is master of the cliche, of the image of the moment." But perhaps even more could be said in his favor...
...artist's famous "Parrish blue," a highly glazed ultramarine over sleek gesso, still glows with an outer-space beauty. His overly graceful figures, like fashion models, strut and stretch, as clearly defined against grainy color backdrops as if they were modern hardedge images given fingers and toes. Only the brooding golden backlighting that makes theaters out of Parrish's scenar ios bespeaks a pre-neon sensibility...